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Life and the world aren't About Me any more, nor any less, than life and the world are about anyone else on the Earth. But, sleeping last night, still night actually, right at five o'clock and outside, the Gulf of Mexico is black as pitch, sleeping & waking and sleeping & waking & sleeping, I realized that there is a hurricane psychosis! It took me back nearly eight years to January 2011, my couple of nights in the ICU following open heart surgery at Cleveland Clinic in Ohio. The medics' work that had been physical and so successful turned out also to have a psychic phase that I experienced, and when I later described it to medical people here back home, was told that it's quite common and known as ICU psychosis: nights there I had recurring dreams, two of them, dreams that would not let go but that, miserable to me, kept returning, recurring even though I woke fully again and again and again, the exact same dream would return. One night it was a parade band playing over and over again and extremely loud the music "Deutschland Über Alles" over and over and over at maddening volume, so obnoxious that waking I would be afraid to go back to sleep knowing its nightmare would resume, and it did.
The other night, I don't remember which dream was first night and which second night, the dream had me on shore frantically trying over and over, by cellphone, to reach, on his cellphone, Alfred, to warn him about the violent squall at the Old Pass and tell him to turn the Annie & Jennie around and return home to her berth at StAndrews, extreme frustration that his cellphone apparently was out of range or dead battery. Only when the dream's anxiety wakened me, which happened constantly through the night, did it occur to me that my mind had merged January 2010 with January 1918, but every time I went back to sleep determined to let the dream go away, it came back, returned in force, anxiety, frustration. Happens often, said a friend who for years in her career had been an ICU nurse, it's called ICU psychosis. Not a problem: it soon fades.
It's not about me. My dream last night that kept coming back on me, was living over and over the shared experiences heard in response to the question that is common these days, whether exchanged with friends at church or with strangers in Publix parking lot or with neighbors at Harbour Village: "DId you stay?" And if they "stayed," which is more often than I a Panama City, Bay County, Florida native would have thought likely, the response is of a terrifying, terrifying day as Hurricane Michael blew ashore and raged over, in some cases including waiting inside the calm eye for the horror to resume.
Just so my ongoingly repetitive dream that came last night after, tomorrow it will be three weeks, driving into the ruin, and also listening as people share their experience of having stayed. My dream: trapped alone in the high level of a parking garage as the hurricane wind and rain sweep through with horrifying force, shifting cars around and back and forth and I have to stay down to keep from being swept away, and crawling around to get out of the way of moving and tumbling vehicles. I'm christening the anxiety dream, hurricane psychosis. Enough already: Go Away! as I know it will in Time.
But life in America: hatred, mutual hatred born of mindless fear, pipe bombs, murder, selfishness, shootings, rise in America of irrational hatred of Jews, of immigrants, of anyone who does not look like me, talk like me, think like me, hate as I do, hate who I hate. How can, why do, we value ourselves more than others, when our God values us more than Himself? Where to run to? And hurry: it's getting late.
The prayers of his people must surely be overwhelming God? Knock, knock, knock, wake up, don't you love us anymore, knock knock knock knock, awake, get up, come out and save.
Or indeed, has God given love and salvation to be our work as stewards of creation?
T
The other night, I don't remember which dream was first night and which second night, the dream had me on shore frantically trying over and over, by cellphone, to reach, on his cellphone, Alfred, to warn him about the violent squall at the Old Pass and tell him to turn the Annie & Jennie around and return home to her berth at StAndrews, extreme frustration that his cellphone apparently was out of range or dead battery. Only when the dream's anxiety wakened me, which happened constantly through the night, did it occur to me that my mind had merged January 2010 with January 1918, but every time I went back to sleep determined to let the dream go away, it came back, returned in force, anxiety, frustration. Happens often, said a friend who for years in her career had been an ICU nurse, it's called ICU psychosis. Not a problem: it soon fades.
It's not about me. My dream last night that kept coming back on me, was living over and over the shared experiences heard in response to the question that is common these days, whether exchanged with friends at church or with strangers in Publix parking lot or with neighbors at Harbour Village: "DId you stay?" And if they "stayed," which is more often than I a Panama City, Bay County, Florida native would have thought likely, the response is of a terrifying, terrifying day as Hurricane Michael blew ashore and raged over, in some cases including waiting inside the calm eye for the horror to resume.
Just so my ongoingly repetitive dream that came last night after, tomorrow it will be three weeks, driving into the ruin, and also listening as people share their experience of having stayed. My dream: trapped alone in the high level of a parking garage as the hurricane wind and rain sweep through with horrifying force, shifting cars around and back and forth and I have to stay down to keep from being swept away, and crawling around to get out of the way of moving and tumbling vehicles. I'm christening the anxiety dream, hurricane psychosis. Enough already: Go Away! as I know it will in Time.
But life in America: hatred, mutual hatred born of mindless fear, pipe bombs, murder, selfishness, shootings, rise in America of irrational hatred of Jews, of immigrants, of anyone who does not look like me, talk like me, think like me, hate as I do, hate who I hate. How can, why do, we value ourselves more than others, when our God values us more than Himself? Where to run to? And hurry: it's getting late.
The prayers of his people must surely be overwhelming God? Knock, knock, knock, wake up, don't you love us anymore, knock knock knock knock, awake, get up, come out and save.
Or indeed, has God given love and salvation to be our work as stewards of creation?
T